Patna, (Bihar Times): Top Bihar bureaucrats, including the chief secretary, R J M Pillai, are having sleepless nights ever since chief minister Nitish Kumar made public their respective mobile phone numbers before the people in the Janata Darbar. Though on record they did not object to this action of the chief minister in private the family members of some of them are extremely furious over the way their privacy has been snatched.
Pillai is receiving on an average 200 calls per day on his cell phone. Some of these calls are too frivolous and badly mistimed.
Nitish Kumar made their numbers known to the public at his Janata Durbar in Khagaria on Wednesday. Since then, Pillai’s cell phone has reportedly not stopped ringing, be it day or night.
“I have received more than 600 calls on my mobile during these three days from all kinds of people wanting to discuss every kind of matter with me. Some involved serious issues but a matching number of calls have been frivolous in nature”, he was quoted in the Hindustan Times.
Some of the calls come in the wee hours of the day while others after midnight. He received one such odd call at 4:00 on Friday morning. “The person on the line at that early hour informed me that he had called just to check whether or not I would pick up the phone”, Pillai told the daily.
However, after midnight he started putting his mobile on silent mode. But the chief secretary was shocked to find next morning missed calls logged at 2:00 am and 3:30 am.
Pillai, however, seems to be generous in his views. “It has helped me gain a whole new insight into a range of issues that concern ordinary people. How many of these problems we will be able to attend to is another matter.”
Principal Secretary, Human Resources Development, Anjani Kumar Singh’s mobile was so much overused by the onslaught of calls from the people that it reportedly developed some snag. Finding his much publicized number unreachable, one of the journalists called on his personal mobile. He found the principal secretary’s bewildered wife on the line.
“My husband is receiving 2,500 calls everyday on his official mobile. Even I am finding it impossible to reach him”, Purnima Shekhar Singh, his wife, complained to the reporter.
For several hours on Saturday, Bihar State Electricity Board chairman Swapan Mukherjee’s mobile continued to return the message that the caller was busy.
Principal Secretary (Health) Bhanu Pratap Sharma’s mobile (9431009131) informed this caller “the dialled number does not exist.”
Is it that the chief minister was given the wrong number or Nitish himself had goofed up in publicizing the number? Or is it that fed up with the calls in the first two or three days the canny bureaucrat has simply changed his number? May be anything! But one thing is clear if they continue to receive calls at this rate they may either develop heart disease or hearing problem.

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Bureaucrat should start enjoying it or else quit.
If they enjoy all the perks and facilities they should also get the pain of it

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